Tag Archives: quilt guild

I am embarrassed to admit how long I was a quilter before I made one for my Mom and how long ago I started this particular quilt. But all that aside, it’s finally finished and received and we are both so pleased with it.

I received a fat eighth pack of Jay McCarroll’s Habitat line for a MQG challenge quilt awhile ago and I fell in love with it so I ordered more and got to work on the Swoon quilt. It’s a bit of a tedious pattern so it languished in a box for awhile until I got the burst of inspiration I needed to get it finished.

I pieced a back with the scraps I had, quilted it in Virginia with a flourish pattern called Denali in a pale mint green thread, bound it in Kona berry, and labeled it.

It was a windy and very sunny day when I photographed it, which makes for washed out pictures, but big thanks to Denise and Austin for helping out and holding it up for me!

I wanted to post a quick recap about the last couple weeks, including the visit with my mom Kerrie and aunt Reen. They came to see me from California for almost a week and were so generous with their time (cleaning) and money; I’m glad they came!

We did a couple touristy things that I wouldn’t probably do by myself like go to the Reynolda House. It’s the historical home of RJ Reynolds (a very attractive man, as it turns out) that houses both the original furniture and history, as an art museum, currently showing Modern Masters from the Smithsonian. I really enjoyed the whole experience. There are also beautiful gardens near the home that while not in season, are still well manicured and lovely. The garden is surrounded in weeping cherry trees that are probably gorgeous in spring (future quilt photography site?); I’ll definitely be returning.

We drove up to Asheville for a day and it was a beautiful day with the perfect fall colors. I had never been to Asheville before and didn’t really know what to do with the few hours we had so we wandered around the arts district by the river a little bit, ate at the Early Girl, went into the Grove Arcade,

and lots of other little shops. There’s a lot of really interesting history there (not that I know it, I just know it’s there) and so much art and busking. At only two hours away, and a lovely drive at that, I’ll definitely go up there again.

We ate a lot of good food while they were here including 6th and Vine, Mellow Mushroom, Breakfast of Course, and First Street Draught House, while I made steak tacos, mini broccoli pesto lasagnas, and chili. Yum! They were really gracious and bought me so many great things I needed like a bath mat, a Swiffer-like cleaner, an immersion blender (even though it was 4 times more expensive than thought!), a nice little cat perch for the window, dishes, soap, chocolate, and a massage! They also mowed both yards, scrubbed my shower, mopped the whole upstairs, and did countless dishes. I wish they were around all the time! :)

While it was great to have them around, I didn’t realize how much time I usually have to myself. After I took them to the airport I spent the day laying around, doing pretty much nothing. I’m enjoying some alone time before Holly comes next week!

I finally finished a Swoon block!

Goodness gracious, this quilt is so labor intensive, especially when I’m trying to make two at one time and have sewn a few things wrong. The coloring of this picture is off but this quilt is both a gift and part of the Habitat challenge in the Modern Quilt Guild (and I am using three different neutrals). Unlike most people, from what I’ve gathered, I love this line and bought a half yard set and would like to get more. I can already tell I’m going to love this quilt.

The weather has been lovely and wonderfully autumnal but today it took a turn for the cold this weekend. (It was 74 yesterday and it’s more like 40 today.) I turned the heat on for the first time and am making Herbed White Bean and Sausage Stew for dinner.

Tomorrow is the big Halloween party at work. You have to dress up to get in, hundreds of people come, and all out friends play in amazing cover bands. Last yea the boyfriend and I only stayed for half of it but we saw the Zombies which were amazing. This year will be Weezer, Led Zeppelin, Dick Dale, the Buzzcocks, and Nirvana. I’m working it and I’m really looking forward to it. Pictures to come!

Tomorrow is also Marcus’s birthday! Whoo! I bought him a little something and I think we’ll go to dinner. Nothing fancy but he (we) isn’t too hard to please :)

My quilt guild did a mini quilt swap this month that was really fun. I made this previously mentioned quilt for Colleen (a fellow Traid-ite). She had said her sewing room was light green or blue and I had no idea what to do. Hearing of the swap, I had originally wanted to do a red and white log cabin like the Bright Furrows quilt in Modern Log Cabin Quilting but thought I should take a different route. I then noticed her affinity for Denyse Schmidt and stars so I came up with this star within a star block, grabbed some of her fabrics, and got to work. Most of the points aren’t perfect and the corner stars aren’t wonky enough to look purposeful, but I had fun making it and Coleen liked it so that’s what counts.

He packaged it in this great fabric box that is very Amy Butler-esque (from World Market, I think he said). Then not only did he include the quilt, I also received a couple charm packs! I love the text covered fabric and will promptly be hanging this mini in my sewing room. Thank you John!

My new blog is up! It’s nothing fancy but considering I learned both WordPress and Photoshop/Illustrator to put it all together myself, I’m pretty darn proud of it. I already like WordPress much better than Blogger (and I can give a more detailed comparison in a couple weeks, if anyone wants to know). There are still a couple kinks to work out so bear with me. I spent a lot of time compiling a list of all the quilts I’ve ever made so take a look around! The next step is getting my store up which I’m really excited and anxious about.

Last night was this month’s quilt guild meeting and I had a really good time. I was finally able to show off the three quilts I worked on at Lindsey’s a few weeks back and a group of us went out afterwards again for Mexican food. We also received the fabric fr our next challenge! FreeSpirit very graciously donated fat eighth bundles of Jay McCarrol’s Habitat line to our guild and we have to make something by October. I won’t be at that meeting due to the Sewing Summit but I’m excited about this project and seeing what everyone else turns out! I am pretty in love with this line, it’s very 80s, and I have no idea what I’m going to do with it. We can add solids to it only so this might take some thinking!

The drive home from the meeting was awesome. I was driving into a storm and could see the clouds light up with lightening for 40 miles before I actually was in it. Even then there were multiple strikes of lightening from one end of the sky to the other. I love storms and this was one of the best ones I’ve ever seen. I tried to take pictures but that doesn’t work so well while driving.

I was hoping to get my Single Girl quilt basted so I could take it to Stitch ‘n’ Bitch tonight but that didn’t happen. I did get the back finished this morning and will hopefully get it together in time for a sewing date my friend Caitlin next weekend! I’m really looking forward to hanging out with her. I met her through the guild, she just moved from DC, works at Spoonflower, and seems like an fun person. I’m sure it will be good times.

Speaking of the Single Girl quilt, it’s the last day of the Finish It Up challenge! I don’t have as many projects finished as I’d set out to complete but I made some definite progress!

I got a mystery package in the mail today from my aunt Lois.It ended up being a bag full of selvages collected from the women in her quilt guild and a very old box full of buttons that were my granny’s!(Camera phone @ nighttime = poor photos)

I have mourned the misplacement of my grandma’s jars of buttons while never thinking my other grandma might have had some. It is a neat old (shoe?) box that Lois thinks might have even been my great-grandmother’s. I’d like to figure out some way to display it. I will put those selvages to quick use as I plug away at my spiderwebs.The class schedule was released a couple days ago and I have registered for what I want to take at the Sewing Summit! If there’s room in all of them I’m going to take Documenting Your Creativity– Blogging and Social Media, Improv Piecing (by Jess of Urban Patchwork), Photographing Your Creations, Quilting at Home (with Allison of Cluck Cluck Sew), Creative Fabric Selection (taught by Jeni of In Color Order), and Marvelous Minis (taught by my idol, Amanda of MsMcPorckchop!). There is also a shop hop the day we get there; I can’t wait for October!I joined another challenge with my guild, this time based around Jay McCarroll’s Habitat line, a generous donation of fat eighths from FreeSpirit. (I had no idea until a couple weeks ago that he won the first season of Project Runway!) We will be picking up the fabric at our meeting in a couple weeks and it’ll be due in October (which I may or not make it to because of my trip to Utah). I have a possible idea for this and a possible recipient of it. I’m always up for a challenge! (Photo from Spool.)

This is my finished project in the Robert KaufmanKona cotton challenge. First of all, thanks so much to RK or the generous donation to our guild (and so many others!), this was a fun and challenging project.

As soon as we got our charm packs, I knew I wanted to make a houndstooth pattern quilt. The original pattern that uses two fabrics uses strip pairs but I cut each square into four diagonal strips, sewed it to strips of Essex Linen in putty (I have 10 yards of this color that I kind of hate), trimmed an inch off two sides of the pieces in the second charm pack, laid it all out, and sewed it together.

The inch wide pieces I removed became the border and the small strips on the back.

The backing is a fabric I bought 5 or 6 yards of when I worked at JoAnn’s 8 years ago. It’s one of the very few fabrics I liked then and still like now, and the colors matched up splendidly with the dusty palette.I quilted it with a meandering pattern inside the thin pieced border with a loopier pattern in the outside border, an bound it with Kona cotton in Moss. After washing it measures 44″ x 63″, a good lap sized quilt.

I might still embroider a label on the back and then it will be gifted as a housewarming present of sorts.

Last night was another great quilt guild meeting where we revealed our Kona cotton challenge pieces. It was amazing to see what everyone did with the same stack of fabric (and how many people said “these colors were really not my style,” me included).

I sewed until 1am on Saturday and got the thing quilted and the binding sewn on the front, which I was pretty impressed by. I hand stitched the binding down after work yesterday, save one side. I’m going to finish that today, throw it in the wash, and take some more pictures tomorrow (maybe, it’s supposed to be the hottest day of the year).

I only purchased two pieces of fabric at Thimble Pleasures.

Two 1001 Castle Peeps prints that I adore. I didn’t think twice about buy some when I saw it around blogland but seeing it in person changed my mind. I might have to buy a fat quarter pack of the line.

A few of us went out for Mexican food and margaritas after the meeting. I had a really good time and I think we might make it a regular occurrence. Thanks for the drinks and hang out, ladies!

Yesterday was another great quilt guild meeting. We did a pillow swap which was really fun. I was kind of sad about thepillow I gave away because I loved it so much but look what I got in return!

It was made by Kate and it was such a funny coincidence. I said I’d put the pillow in my sewing room and though I didn’t say what colors the room is painted, look what colors she picked out! It was serendipitous. Thank you so much Kate!

Bonnie, the woman I made my pillow for seemed really pleased, which made me very happy. I hope it finds a good place in her home. Thank you for being such a kind recipient, Bonnie!

I also bought some fabric while at Thimble Pleasures. It’s good I only go there once a month because I’d be spending all my money there otherwise. There was some Katie Jump Rope on clearance so I bought four yards of that, I got a yard of Bob’s Shirt from Uptown by Erin Michaels, also on clearance, 5 yards of Kona in Moss and 8 yards of Freespirit solids in Manatee for some Single Girl action.

Next month is the Kona cotton challenge show off and I’m really excited about it! I finally ordered that last bit of fabric I need and started cutting tonight. I did some math and some sketches and have decided on a recipient of this quilt after completion.

sewing,picking, pinning, and more sewing,I finished one of my most favorite little projects last night.

The Triangle Modern Quilt Guild is doing a pillow swap at our next meeting.

The person I got partnered with basically said do anything and while that seemed like too much freedom at first, I was inspired by this and this and came up with this pillow.

It took hours and hours, much longer than it should have, but now it’s done and I’m pretty in love with it! I did an invisible zipper but the cover is pretty tight on the pillow form so it actually looks like it’s separating already! :( I don’t particularly want to pick out and redo the zipper but I can’t give my partner a broken pillow! I have a few more days to decide what to do.

I went to my second quilt guild meeting last night. We had a scrap bag swap and though I spent a frantic 10 minutes packing it, I think I put a good bag together. I’m not so crazy, however, at the bag I got in return. I haven’t looked through it but from what I can see I don’t think I’ll use much of it. Oh well, I still got rid of some stuff.

We got our Kona cotton charm packs which I’m super excited about (thank you Robert Kaufman!). It turns out we can use as much yardage of the colors in the pack, plus one other solid and one print if we want, so I’m going to be able to do what I want by buying another of the same charm pack and adding some Essex linen. We have to finish a quilt top (or our project of choice) by July which is totally doable. Next month is the Spoonflower field trip and June is a pillow swap, both of which will be fun.

I allowed myself $20 to buy fabric at Thimble Pleasures, the shop we have the meeting at. There was SO MUCH fabric I could hardly decide. In the end I bought this…

and I hope to make a cute summer dress with it.

On the drive home the sun was setting and at one point I was driving right into it and it looked huge and red. It was crazy. (Sorry the picture’s blurry, I was in the car.)

There was a clothing swap at work on Saturday and I didn’t find any clothes I like but I grabbed a couple things to use the fabric from. Or maybe alter… I haven’t decided. This dress has some potential either as a skirt or maybe a tube dress.

I finally started on a quilt commission I got asked about, ahem, a year ago… I have been intimidated by it but I’m feeling convicted about having my quilting priorities all wrong :( I have that commission, a tshirt commission I got the approval on just today, a wedding quilt by the middle of May, two baby quilts as soon as possible (definitely by June), another really fun commission in the next two months, and four projects of my own (spiderweb, Hope Valley, ring of fire redo, Single Girl). Eesh! That’s a lot of projects. I can totally do it! I will go ahead with confidence.